Archives for January 18, 2018

In my last post, I talked about the concept of Information Governance and its importance. In this post, I will discuss some of the fundamental principles of Information Governance.

The image above shows the different types of information resources that can be generated within an organization. Social media, for example, can generate a large volume of very varied records. Application management and BYOD (bring your own device) can be prone to third-party interference and data mining, which can create a high degree of vulnerability when it comes to metadata about organizations and people. The Cloud environment and Big Data are other areas with significant Information Management (IM) implications, but we can discuss all these areas in future posts.

As IM professionals, we are involved in the tasks on the periphery of this content; namely, we create, disseminate, and manage policies that pertain to how information resources are created, protected, attributed value – which ties into the retention of records – preserved for long-term use, and finally disposed of in a regulated and controlled environment. Below are some of the major principles of Information Governance, in no particular order:

Educate all employees regarding their Information Governance duties and responsibilities.

Confirm the authenticity and integrity of information resources.

Store information resources in an enterprise-approved system or record-keeping repository.

Classify information resources according to organizational functions.

Control the unnecessary proliferation of information resources.

Dispose of information resources when they reach the end of their legal and operational usefulness.